A Letter to the Dead
by xxanglophilexx
Summary: You’re dead, and I’m writing you a letter. Does that make any sense? I hope not, because it doesn’t make any sense to me, and when you understand things I don’t, you start to gloat. Angsty oneshot. A letter written by Remus to Sirius. Past tense slash.


**A/N: It's just a very angsty letter that Remus writes to Sirius after Sirius dies. Slash is mentioned, although it is mild and in the past tense.**

**Disclaimer: If I owned **_**Harry Potter**_**, Sirius and Remus would be doing a lot more than hugging like brothers and giving joint Christmas presents. JKR is lucky enough to have the rights to **_**Harry Potter **_**and the puppies, not me.**

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Dear Sirius,

I feel extremely stupid writing this. You're _dead. _You're dead, and I'm writing you a letter. Does that make any sense? I hope not, because it doesn't make any sense to me, and when you understand things I don't, you start to gloat.

We all miss you. Harry…he looks awful. He blames himself. I tried to convince him that it wasn't his fault, but he's in that stubborn mourning period.

I went through that too.

For…for about a month after you…_died_…I just couldn't say it. I literally _couldn't _bring myself to acknowledge the fact. I was still so convinced that you would clomp downstairs and start whinging about your mother or some strange flesh-eating creature you found in the attic. I was still so convinced that you would come back to me.

Every night of that month I sat down at the table, at eleven o'clock, as we did whenever I wasn't on an Order mission. I prepared our tea—equal parts tea and sugar for you; just two lumps for me—and sat down. I sipped my tea and waited and waited for you to come. I just sat there waiting, Padfoot. You never did come. You left me alone. I waited for you for hours until someone—Molly, usually—would help me upstairs and put me in bed. _Our _bed.

I didn't wash the sheets at all for six weeks after it happened. Every night, I buried my face into your pillow and _breathed _you, remembered you. Even when the scent of wet dog and your ridiculous Muggle shampoo and everything so uniquely _you _began to fade, I clung to that pillow as if it were you.

I was so useless for that month. I spent all my time waiting for you to come back. All my time clinging to reminders of you, and sitting there. I didn't accept the fact that you were truly gone. I kept reminding myself that you had been gone for over _twelve years _and had come back. I had been willing to wait all that time. I had just wanted you back with me.

You weren't going to come back. I finally accepted that, exactly thirty-two days after you left. I'm not sure what triggered it, but all of a sudden, when I was drinking my tea, I dropped the cup and it shattered on the floor. Molly came rushing in, but then she left quickly when she saw that I was finally reacting, accepting, coming to terms with what had happened. You know Molly—she would have loved to wrap her arms around me and comfort me. But she left, and I am thankful for that. She had known that I hadn't truly cried for you, so she let me be.

But I didn't cry. I _sobbed._ For hours. I couldn't stop. The tears just kept coming and coming… It was awful. I finally, _finally _realized that _you weren't coming back. _You were never going to come back, even if I prepared your tea for you every night and wore your clothing and kept that picture of us that James took of you kissing me on the cheek whilst we were wading in the lake in my pocket, with the one of you coming out with battle scars from your fight with the Giant Squid, pathetic and falling and begging me to "kiss it better", taped to the back.

I was on my own again.

I _am _on my own again.

Right now, as people pass by me whilst I write, busy and chatting in terse tones, I am alone. They don't _look _at me, Padfoot. Well, they _do_, but it isn't a real look. It's the sort of look that you give an invalid. It's fitting, seeing as that's what they treat me like. Molly is so keen to take care of me, now, despite her earlier kindness. She treats me like I'm her own child, and I just can't muster up enough energy to tell her to stop, to leave me alone, that she can't make it better, no matter how hard she tries to help.

If you were here, you wouldn't let me mope. You would gallop in with some inane scheme for catching doxies or fill me in on your plan for bringing the Flobberworms onto Dumbledore's side whilst listing all of their good attributes when I argued that all Flobberworms did was eat lettuce. Then you would grab my hand and force me to help you with whatever you were doing until I was laughing and smiling again. Even though my laugh would be hollow, and yours would be too, it would be something. It would be a connection. All I want is a connection.

Of course, if you were here, I wouldn't be mourning, now would I?

I just wanted to say…I miss you. You probably know that already, but if my pathetic blathering hasn't already tipped you off, there it is in blatant print. I thought that those twelve years that you spent in Azkaban were horrible, but they're nothing compared to this. I could pretend that I hated you then; I think a small part of me actually did. But there was another part of me that rigidly insisted that you were innocent, that you would never go to the same side as the blood relatives that you so desperately hated, that you would never betray us, the Marauders: your brother Prongs and your lover Moony and your friend Wormtail. I should have listened to that part of me, but I ignored it. It was easier to hate you than to love you. It made the pain more bearable.

I can't hide behind that illusion now.

That is why this is so horrible. I love you. I love you so bloody much that it hurts. It's pain; awful, evil pain. I wish that I could escape it, but I can't. For the rest of my life I will love you more than anything or anyone, ever. I will love you, and it will kill me inside, because you're _gone, _Sirius. You're _really gone_, and you're never going to come back to me. I'm going to live out the rest of my life in pain because I love you, and I have known from day one that I shouldn't love you, but you were so wonderful and witty and attractive that I _did_—I _do_—and I set myself up for a lifetime of hurting just because you are all that I'll ever want.

Is it horrible that I wish for death now? I'm hoping,_ wishing_, _dreaming_, that death will reunite me with you. Maybe then we can go back to where we were before Azkaban, before suspicion, before bitterness and lies and hurt. Back to when we were fresh out of Hogwarts and clambering into our brand new flat whilst discussing wedding plans with James and Lily.

Are you with them now, Sirius? Are you? I hope you are. I know how much it hurt you when James died, even though I couldn't be with you afterwards. I watched you cry twelve years later, though, as you watched James's son act so like James, yet so unlike him. I hope that you and James are somewhere, anywhere, discussing pranks whilst Lily whacks you with a dishrag, as she always used to do when we all had tea together. That would be nice, wouldn't it? I miss the sting of Lily's expertly-wielded rag and your loud cackle of defiance as you lifted her up and threw her into the sink, just catching her before she really fell.

I always caught you, Sirius. I always caught you before you fell into depression, or self-hatred, or just pure misery. I wish you were here to catch me now, Padfoot. For years, you caught me too.

With this war impending, I will die soon. I'm not afraid of death anymore. I am looking forward to it, actually. I'm looking forward to the moment when we will be together again. When I can hold you again, and we can laugh about things that shouldn't be laughed about until tears are rolling down our cheeks and our sides are aching and Lily is yelling at us to have some decency and be respectful.

Maybe I'll die, and there will be nothing. Bleakness. Darkness everywhere. I still wouldn't see you. It's discomforting, but I don't think that nothingness would be too bad. It would be numb, wouldn't it?

Numbness would be nice. I would welcome it.

I would do anything to escape this pain. I would do anything to be with you again, to tell you that I loved you again and again and again until my lips were numb and my voice was hoarse.

I didn't say it before you left for the Ministry, and I will always regret it.

I will always regret not telling you it everyday, because everyday, all day, from that moment in sixth year when I first realized it, I have loved you with everything I am, and nothing will ever change that.

I love you…

Remus


End file.
